Johnbt

While we're waiting on all of the rods to make it to the shelves, does anybody remember enough college physics to explain how to solve this problem? I don't, it was 50 years ago. I was googling rod torque since St. Croix said they are now considering rod torque and came across this at www.bartleby.com/questions-and-answers/28.-the-fishing-pole-in-figure-p10.28-makes-an-angle-of-w-20.0-with-the-horizontal.-what-is-the-torq/0b55ff40-72cd-418b-9eda-b7542a02168f

"if anyone has the inclination to attend a weigh in, I would highly suggest it." They're great fun. I keep saying I'm going to see another Classic weigh in, but I always go to the beach or just go fishing instead. The last ones I saw were at the Richmond Coliseum in '88 and '90. There will be another Northern Open just down the street on the James in May, so that will have to do. Unless I go fishing.

I've never back reeled a fish in my life. I suppose I'm too old to learn that new trick after fishing for 65 years.

Good thing we're in the so-called first world. Good thing all of the spinning reel makers haven't abandoned AR switches. A reel without an AR switch is like a drill without reverse. And I have 4 old corded drills I seldom use because I have two newer ones that have reverse. Good drills, too.

"I will often turn it off just to let out a little line when I've reeled up too far." Me too. Or when the boat is drifting and I want the worm or lure to stay where it is. Or when I'm fishing on the bank or the beach and want to back up a few feet or a couple dozen feet. Sure, I could open the bail, but it's not as precise.

The important question is, is everybody in the boat getting skunked or only you?

What's on sale? I can't figure it out unless I hear it here. I just got the teeny BPS sale flyer in the mail. Gave it a quick glance and tossed it. Is it a sale if it's all the same old regular price? I was just looking through the 598-page 2021 Spring Master Catalog they sent me. After 100 pages of ads I gave up looking for the Table of Contents. Then I jumped to the back to look for an Index. Nothing. I guess I'm going blinder faster than I thought. And don't get me started on how much I miss my Cabela's hardbound catalogs and their very high quality gear selections. Okay, I suppose I'm just testy because I have this TW gift card I got from my wife and TW doesn't have a P5 or Conquest that I want. Fwiw, I have drawer full of unopened t-shirts. I LOVE GREEN TOP. Although I miss the old cramped store they had before they moved into the Gander building after they left town.

"Can I shoot him instead?" You know there's an ammo shortage, right? ___________ I saved money today with my free Amazon Prime shipping. Sort of. I needed to drive into town this afternoon to get a haircut before the next big ice storm hits later tonight. They're predicting 30 hours or so, but who knows. We lost power for 16 hours Saturday and Sunday. I was going to stop by Total Wine first and then by a shop to get 12 CR123 batteries for $29.95. But I looked on Amazon and got 12 Streamlight batteries for $21.50 with FREE SHIPPING. Yay. So instead, after my haircut, I went into the farm store to buy some bags of bird seed and came out with a new generator. I couldn't believe they had one left. Just one.

Muskie populations in Virginia are self sustaining in the James and New rivers. The state runs a stocking program for a dozen or two rivers and lakes. "Virginia Tech and the VDGIF have done several studies on musky diets. They concluded that bass make up less than 10% of what a typical musky consumes. Suckerfish were the largest type of musky food source at over 50% of the sampled fish. It’s pretty cool how they actually gathered this data for the study. Musky over 32″ in length were harvested through electrofishing. Electrofishing temporarily stuns the fish but does not do any permanent harm. The biologists then pumped pressurized water into the fish stomachs causing the contents to be expelled. This practice is great because it allows them to study what the musky are feeding on without killing/dissecting the fish. Sources: The Roanoke Times Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries"

My favorite for many, many years has been the plain old Booyah gold double willow chartreuse. I have also used white a lot and the other Booyah spinnerbaits with success and also have a few dozen War Eagle copper spinnerbaits left. I really like the trailer keeper spike on the Booyahs.

There's an outfitter in Charlottesville who's been fishing for muskie for a number of years along with the usual chance to catch 50 to 100 smallies a day. I've never been because I can catch all the smallmouth I want by rockhopping downtown in James River Park. His favorite Virginia muskie rivers are the Shenandoah, James and New. Here's a hint: "September – April or May depending on water temperatures. Once the water temps warm up to around 75 degrees we will stop fishing for them."

http://leefisherintl.com/recreational-fishing IF you look at the footer of their site, it lists Just For Fishing

Kalin's salty lunker grubs and sometimes Bass Pro curl tail chartreuse silver flake. I never stopped using them as trailers. If they don't work with the tail turned down, try it turned up.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=adGq5uVnKuE I can see I need better rods.

I consider lipping every fish to be practice for my next 10+ pounder. I've never boat flipped a bass. Sunfish yes, small crappie yes, bass no.

""We are developing all of our future rod series with the effects of "rod torque" in mind."- Ryan Teach, St. Croix Rods Product Manager" There they go, rushing headlong into the 1990s.

Just be aware that high pH cleaners like Grease Police can be quite dangerous, especially to your eyes. Wear eye protection. The reason they work so well is because they are caustic. Grease Police has a pH of 12.6. It's on line one of page 5 https://images.homedepot-static.com/catalog/pdfImages/23/23187274-a8b0-47b0-a98c-90acee9b784e.pdf On the scale of 0 to 14 with 7 being neutral and low numbers being acidic, it's way up there. Something like Simple Green has a Ph of 8.5 - 9.5. Household ammonia is just 11 or 12. Sodium hydroxide - Lye - is 12 or 13. ______________ edited to add: I just looked at the MSDS for some spray junk I buy at the Dollar General for a buck. LA's Awesome Cleaner. It was the only thing that removed the vertical black stains from our white aluminum gutters. pH of 12 - 13 No wonder I was wearing heavy rubber gloves.

www.texassaltwaterfishingmagazine.com/fishing/education/fishy-facts/color-penetration-fish-sight Although this is a saltwater article, it's still interesting in terms of the variables they've looked at concerning light and fish vision. I'll mention two here. The first involves the creation of polarized light when the sunlight reflects off the water's surface. "Another possibility is that having polarizing vision can let fish see objects that are farther away, perhaps three times the distance. If this speculation is correct, it may explain why some fish seem to feed more aggressively under very low-light conditions, such as dawn or dusk." "Fun Fact: in calm weather, a diver can look upward to see the entire hemisphere of the sky compressed into a circle – a phenomenon called Snell’s window, caused by the bending of light as it enters water." "Due to Snell’s window, a fish can see through an area of the surface which has a diameter of about twice that of its depth. So a fish at 5 feet of depth will be able to see through a circular window of about 10 feet in diameter above her. Additionally, the fish can see objects above the water far to the side of the window, due to refraction. Outside of the window, the fish will see a mirror of the bottom structure. Potentially useful information when stalking fish in clear water."

I've recently started reading fishing articles on polarized light, how baitfish and lures reflect polarized light and how predators see it and benefit from it. Talk about jumping down the rabbit hole. (I was physics major in undergrad school and tend to fall down rabbit holes containing too much detail.) Meanwhile, I just read an article that mentioned both Brown's original 1937 research and Dr. Hill's (the developer of the Color-C-Lector.} www.bassmaster.com/gene-gilliland/do-bass-anglers-need-every-color-rainbow "Brown found and Hill confirmed that bass can see a range of at least 28 colors from reds to violets. In addition to the traditional color spectrum, Hill studied fluorescent colors and found bass equally discriminatory. Bass tended to show a preference towards fluorescent blue, green, chartreuse and orange. Under varying light intensity and water clarity, bass consistently responded more strongly to fluorescent colors than non-fluorescent colors."

Looks like it. For $129 it better clean the fish and cook them, too.

I vote for put it on and don't worry about it. I had a Lowrance transducer for an Elite 5 HDI on a Maxxum 70 bow mount from 2014 until this year. I fish small dark water for the most part and have hit so many stumps, humps, logs and a few rocks that it's a minor miracle it lasted as long as it did. And honestly, it could be the unit that started reading the wrong depth half the time and not the transducer. Four or five years ago we were in an electric-only reservoir with the 70 wide open and the 35 on the transom wide open. Yeah, we knew the water level was drawn far down, but what the heck we thought we knew the channel after all these years. We were out in the middle and hit a sand bar so hard we stopped in 3 or 4 feet. Everything went flying. The shaft of the 70 bent all the way back until the prop and the motor housing hit the bottom of my 1648. I had to have the motor rebuilt with a new armature for a couple hundred bucks, but the prop didn't break and the motor is still running fine today. And the hull survived with a few scratches. Those Minn Kota shafts are pretty sturdy, too. The transducer survived it. Didn't even crack the little housing or bend the clamp. ___________ edited to add: I also had to replace the bottom half of the control box. That's the piece that sits on the top of the shaft. I guess the flexing shaft cracked it around the hole. It wasn't too hard pulling the gears and the cables out. I took lots of pics. That was $11 or $12 and I did it myself.

Here's the Color-C-Lector manual from 2004. I haven't seen one since the '80s www.ispikeit.com/Images/Color-C-Lector-1.pdf Is this actually still for sale? I never knew. www.ispikeit.com/product/6/color-c-lector

Good idea. I usually don't worry a lot about credit card fraud, but I just received a replacement Visa from Chase/AmazonPrime because somebody bought 2 Coach handbags for over $1800. The bank looked at my purchase history of fishing, boating and tool stuff and immediately took care of it in about 5 minutes.

The worst one I've had in the past few years. I got up at 4:30 one morning to go fishing. Drove 30 minutes across Richmond with my boat to meet 3 friends. They were there as planned with a boat. Drove an hour to our favorite private lake. Drove down the mile long rough gravel farm path to find the lake had been drawn down 3 feet and the bank was slick clay and wet weeds. Not good. Hmm, is there enough water? How deep is the wet clay under the foot of wet weeds? The side of the hill is bad enough on a good day and my 4Runner has new Michelins too. My buddy put his 1648 in first, with a lot of jerking back and forth and such. The last hard stop produced a very loud BANG. Hmm, was that a brake line? Yes and no. It was total brake failure, except for the parking brake and that was iffy. Well, he tried to put it in. It didn't actually come off the trailer. So we did a little bank fishing, unhooked his trailer, nursed his Expedition up the mile long road to the county gravel road and waited an hour for the tow truck. Oh, I forgot the part where I got talked into driving 20 minutes to the nearest country store, with my boat, and buying two bottles of brake fluid that promptly ran out on the ground. Duh. What did he think was going to happen. I've known him 40+ years, so there was a lot of trash talk going on.

The Xuron tools are carbon steel, so keep them dry if you take them out of the house. My tools have to survive being mistreated on the boat and the beach.